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With reference to the 'copy and paste ' comment earlier. My preliminary ecological survey was what subsequently resulted in a recommendation for me to get the Reptile mitigation survey, at £1066 i might add. I spoke to the woman that was going to do this and asked her what time i should be on site. The reply was' oh, this is a desk top survey, i dont need to come to site' !!! When the report was then presented to me it was almost an exact copy and paste of the previous Preliminary ecological survey. I challenged the cost of it and got a bland response from the consulting agency. So i challenged it again and showed them a comparision between the two reports to highlight, in bold colours, that there were no more than 6 sentences of original content in the Reptile plan. 6 sentences for £1066 They relented and gave me back £828 Know what you are doing , what they are doing and dont be afraid to call them out. Regards keith

Summary: Delay your project by one year. In that year, kill the wildlife. Then get the ecologist back. What sort of idiot posts that kind of nonsense? I'm not an idiot. But that is the truthful sum of my experience in three sentences. That is what happens locally: I have seen local farmers do that. I have talked to the ecologists who have worked on those farms, I have talked to the farmers. I know them well enough for our dogs to be on good arse-sniffing terms I have bitter experience of following the ecology guidelines to-the-letter, (I'm German - zero imagination in relation to telling the authorities to get stuffed) and watching a neighbour take all the information I paid for (£2500 worth of work) and apply it to his own Planning Application - then submit that stolen information (plagiarised?) to a different Ecologist, and get a recommendation for a RAMS (Reasonable Attenuation Statement - cost? a few quid) - whereas I had to spend about £6000 sorting it all out. Having thus raised my BP to 190 over 60, here's a reading list for you. I am not arguing you should kill any wildlife. Ever. Can't take a joke? Don't apply for planning permission.

I moved into a house years ago, who ever did the foundation measured wrong and it 1m longer than it should be. Brickie, just followed the foundation line. Everyone assume it was correct including building control. Great for me, a longer garage than expected.

Pleasure @MDC. Read up on all of your LPA decisions where ecology was involved. Read between the lines. Work out which ecologist the LPA uses to make the 'expert ' decisions for them. (The Planner couldn't give a stuff - they just act on the ecologists recommendation). Then look up that ecologists (expert's) work and read every single one of his / her recommendations. Work out who he / she works with. Nods and winks work on their networks as well as any other professional network. Then - if you have to - talk to a range of ecologists who could possibly work for you, and read (say) the last 6 reports they submitted. There'll be one or two that are close to your ' specification' . Try hard not to be annoyed at the amount of copy>and>pasting that goes on. Whe I retire from my retirement activity (house building) , I'm going to call myself an Ecological Technician (as in Architect, Architectural technician). Then copy and paste till my hearts content and get paid for it. Friday Night - International Party Night. Have a good one. Ian

For those reading (too late for the OP I am afraid) once you have your perfect line painted on the ground, you set up "profiles" around the site, far enough back to not be bothered by the digger, and these mark the lines you want to achieve. So once the digger gets busy you can check you are digging in the right place with a laser or even a simple string line between your profiles.

https://t.co/m74sdRrq0B Just read that in a U turn Scot Gov will now back a private member's bill for new building regulations introducing passivehoose standards or a Scottish equivalent.😜😜 Superinsulated Airtight Triple glazed MHRC Lack of thermal bridges.

Rang a local architect with a view to engaging his services. He's coming to see me next week. I picked him based on 3 recent, local applications by neighbours all involving different architects. Out of the three, he seems to have the best grasp on local planning sensitivities.

WHY? Seriously I would sack the joiner, he knows nothing about buildings. If you had followed the plans you would have a warm roof that does not need ventilating and you would not have these issues. Just why did he want to go back to "the old ways"? No wonder the building trade is so poor in general. Sorry a bit of a rant, but there are plenty of people having issues with their homes in this cold weather, and your joiner talking you out of doing it properly is an example of why.

Spot on. To expand on the chat I was having with the manufacturer today. They said they needed 20000m ^2 trickle ventilation on a new build . The only way to achieve this was to add a head extension to the window and fit double vents and one at the hopper.. remember window frame looses more heat than a modern argon / filmed glass unit. For a bit of fun they did a hot box test and you had massive heat loss at the vents.. but does the window need to comply with or without vents? Most trickle vents in Upvc are formed by routering out the outside and inside, have yet to seen sleeved ones on the commonly installed windows .. every day is a school day. The outcome was they said to the developer.. will be cheeper and more Architecturally pleasing to fit MVHR.. problem goes away until each occupant say in a block of housing wants to live their own individual life. My grip is this. I do a bit of work on historic structures. I make the argument to BC that they leak air like sieves and say.. my Clients are grown up.. if the buiding gets stuffy they will open a window! If you ask for big trickle vents you need to justify why.. yes you are BC but I will challenge you on these techinical matters, in particular how to you justify the heat loss and environmental impact.. that gets them thinking. They stick to the regs but you can turn this against them at times.. by saying if you stick to this part of the regs you shoot yourself in the foot on energy conservation so "tell me what to do" I wonder.. why can we not just educate the public.. if your house feels damp, you are boiling up potaoes / drying a bit of washing inside.. open a window? My Mum does that and she is 91. If it is windy then the house will air quickly.. we need some common sense in the regs rather than this blanket prescribed approach that we need to conform to because some young polititians who are over paid for their talents decide that this is the best way to get re elected at our expense.

I know.. the plans drawn up by the architect do specify a warm deck, but I can remember the BCO talking with the joiner and coming up with a cold deck construction. Yes, the xmas tree is there as last xmas there was only footings there and we didnt have room in the house for one. We was hoping to be done this xmas but not so. Were doing the lions share ourselves so its taking a while, that and money,,,

I don't think you can design oversized UFH. The higher performing UFH the better because it will allow you to run a lower flow temperature from the heat pump. Your heat pump will be able to heat water to whatever lower limit you require. This makes no difference if its a 5kW unit or a 12kW unit. My heat curve starts providing water at 21C. Yes it cycles, but it cycles so infrequently that it's not an efficiency problem.

With no plasterboard and that great big gap, the warm moist air from the room can get to the cold deck board and it is no wonder you are getting condensation and mould. The insulation might as well not be there at all for all the good it is doing. Really bad design, I would not use flush downlights without a re design of the roof personally. The best you can do is fill in as much of the gap as you can leaving just a very small round hole for each light, and then fit a sealed downlight, NOT the open framed ones to try and minimise how much of your precious warm air can escape to the cold side.

Can you post a picture further out to give more context of what we are looking at there. Where are the lights? indeed where is even the ceiling plasterboard? How are you seeing this or is it not yet finished and the plasterboard is not yet on?

By chance I came across a very extensive table of major material suppliers price increases for 2023, mainly in Jan and March. I can't for the life of me find it now however just about everything had a price increase. I called my BM up to check it out and they confirmed what I'd read. They said plasterboard going up 17% from 1st Jan so got my order in now.

Absolutely not…. I build stuff like this all day at work and we’d never consider measuring the current through the coil of a relay. It would just be a mosfet that drives the coil.

Got this McAlpine one. https://www.toolstation.com/mcalpine-bath-wasteoverflow/p59080 Must say, Screwfix in town.. you feel like a number, fodder. Toolstation, new in town (far fewer folks in, helps every time) is the reverse: all staff are very helpful & very friendly. Every time. I am hoping to win a screwdriver in their prizedraw, yes it's true, but I'm impressed, & that helps a panicking idiot like me. Z

Your original question : >>> Can you show me the times when there was no RE generation at all. >>>Then it is just a matter of scaling. "Can you show me something you didn't claim existed". I showed you how low it got - with all the installed capacity. Yes, the number is specifically for wind but it really changes nothing in the argument: a lull can occur at night when solar is not around either (actually, I did not check when it happened, it really does not matter). I do hope you are not planning on splitting hairs including biomass or other non-scalable options.

Ours has twice this week for an hour or so overnight. Both incoming and outgoing air streams were below freezing so the unit lowered the supply fan speed to avoid freezing up the heat exchanger.

I do wonder how much of this is just a bit of political posturing. If you were genuinely worried about domestic energy use surely spending the money on retrofit schemes, training and development would be of more use. Harder to do though.

If you use no buffer, make sure you water volume is acceptable for the heat pump manufacturer for warranty purposes, don't zone it to death, one or zones only. Some charts attached

Don't fit a buffer, it's only there to provide a defrost volume to draw heat from. They sap efficiency and mean you end up with a fixed speed secondary pump. Go direct, much better.

They are so blind, so unimaginative, so lacking in foresight and ignorant.

The table isn't right as such but the way you enter the parameters is correct. It's just an idiosyncrasy of the LG Therma V controller.

And the builder didn't notice? Be suspicious. Potentially the builder could also be issued with a credit note which you wouldn't see.

In your house maybe! I'm staying in the lounge where it's 11.6degC any warmer and I might have take the blanket and wooly hat off! SWMBO currently outside trying to thaw the kitchen waste pipes that run around the house perimeter above ground. Frozen solid meaning the washing machine, dishwasher and kitchen sink can't be used. Boiling copious kettles etc. When I said about sorting proper drains...you'll take too long, the mess etc. Usual insanity.

It talks about that in the consultation document. As we all know passivhaus is as much about attention to detail as it is about standards and design. But it also needs a lot of scrutiny at each stage of the build. As you suggest there needs to be a sea change in attitude to make this happen. However, it’s exactly what needs to happen if we want to build better houses as standard.

I was aware this was coming and had a ‘debate’ with our timber kit supplier about it. My argument was I didn’t want to build a house that ended up well below the regs shortly after completion. They struggled to understand this and stuck to the line you are building to better than the current regs so won’t affect us 🙄

Not sure you can. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1998/2451/part/D/made Enclosed pipes 19.—(1) No person shall install any part of any installation pipework in a wall or a floor or standing of solid construction unless it is so constructed and installed as to be protected against failure caused by the movement of the wall, the floor or the standing as the case may be. (2) No person shall install any installation pipework so as to pass through a wall or a floor or standing of solid construction (whether or not it contains any cavity) from one side to the other unless— (a)any part of the pipe within such wall, floor or standing as the case may be takes the shortest practicable route; and (b)adequate means are provided to prevent, so far as is reasonably practicable, any escape of gas from the pipework passing through the wall, floor or standing from entering any cavity in the wall, floor or standing. (3) No person shall, subject to paragraph (4), install any part of any installation pipework in the cavity of a cavity wall unless the pipe is to pass through the wall from one side to the other. (4) Paragraph (3) shall not apply to the installation of installation pipework connected to a living flame effect gas fire provided that the pipework in the cavity is as short as is reasonably practicable, is enclosed in a gas tight sleeve and sealed at the joint at which the pipework enters the fire; and in this paragraph a “living flame effect gas fire” means a gas fire— (a)designed to simulate the effect of a solid fuel fire; (b)designed to operate with a fanned flue system; and (c)installed within the inner leaf of a cavity wall. (5) No person shall install any installation pipework or any service pipework under the foundations of a building or in the ground under the base of a wall or footings unless adequate steps are taken to prevent damage to the installation pipework or service pipework in the event of the movement of those structures or the ground. (6) Where any installation pipework is not itself contained in a ventilated duct, no person shall install any installation pipework in any shaft, duct or void which is not adequately ventilated.

I'm reminded of how we designed our house and garage to be at 90 degrees forming an L shaped plan. We were not on site when footings were put in and block and beam floors were constructed. Only after the patios were eventually laid did it become obvious that it was about 93 degrees between hose and garage so the slabs were all cut on an angle. At the time I had a mind to have the garage torn down and completely rebuilt but we were keen to see an end to it all. 25 years on it just makes me smile.

It’s a Daiichi relay and they make them still but the distributors are all industrial type places. https://www.j-dec.co.jp/en/pages/30/smarts/ You may have to off board the relay using fly leads to use something more standard, or do a Din mount somewhere.

Haha. Actually Temp I was intelligent enough to have bailed out all the bathwater, prior to my photo.

I'd buy some PCB mount 1/4" tabs, whip the relay out and make up some fly-leads...

Hi SAS, thanks great help. A huge ammount for me understand in this post though, much I don't tbh. Will try going through it over the weekend. Appreciated. The idea early on in this post though, of buildings falling down.. has me kinda stopping with the idea right here. Get a pro in. Because as I'm dealing with such a basically-built stone rectangle shell, with damp within the walls (capillary action seemingly drawing it up) & know mud used as mortar, (mud evidence seen in my porch renovation).. plus with my still limited building experience, then I think it's wise that I don't even think about the excavation work myself. This is what I was aiming for, to be able to make an evaluation on whether the excavation work is A) sensible, + B) a tenable idea with my skills = C) whether it (IE the excavation 'lions share' main part of the job).... is a feasable idea, for ME. I think the right conclusion is no. If it was a more modern building, I think the answer might be yes. That's great. I'll pause & consider getting a quote for my local builder I know (who knows these old stone cottages well) to do the excavation: leaving a prepped surface for me to add dpm/ PIR/ new floor. Gratefully, Zoot

One bit of psychology to add: once a big decision has been made, you're invested in it and won't give it a second thought. It's only at the umming and ahhing stage before the big decision has been made that your mind will be 'all over the place'. Crack on.

Also from the photo the flow rates look quite low. You may be better with a higher flow rate and slightly small DP across the loops, this would give more energy to the floor, you then reduce flow rate. Option to look at later. On the night set back, only drop it 2 degrees, then the boiler isn't having to work so hard to recover floor temp. But just alter one thing at a time, understand the outputs before changing something else.

No we're gluing it directly down onto the screed in order to get maximum heat from the UFH!

We realized that they weren't heating the right rooms and cooled the whole system and pumped heat into each zone and sorted the actuators for the relevant room. The plumber used the previous markings and didnt check last year. They were wrong. That is why the current photo labels dont match. I need to relabel.

I've got a Nibe controller, so if you have any specific controller settings then I can help answer. Unless the curve has been set to flat line the default system should be set up for Weather Compensation. If you could take a look at this and provide a picture or details requested above then that would be a good start to getting some answers. (Do you have Nibe Uplink so that you can monitor / control the system remotely?)

The fact that much of what you say is sadly a symptom of "over burdened with silly rules" If the environmental / wildlife rules were simple, cheap and logical everybody, including farmers, would abide by them and wildlife would be better for it. Put too many stupid, over expensive, over time consuming and bureaucratic rules and a percentage will do as your farmers and the result is "what wildlife, there is nothing in this stinking pond" But the people that make the rules cannot see this is happening and their rules ARE the problem. We were lucky here that there were never any wildlife hoops to jump through, in spite of having a burn running through the site, and I know there are bats here, you see them flying about at dusk. The result of no silly rules is we just got on with is sympathetically. We did not harm the burn but neither did we need any tests, rules or barriers to ensure we did not harm it. There were no buildings on our site so the bats were not living there so we did not need a survey to tell us there were no bats put in danger. We just got on with it. We did not need someone to tell me there was a root protection zone around a tree and put a barrier to show it, we just knew not to undermine the roots of a tree. The trees are still there without a survey or silly rules to protect them.

At these low outside temperatures your "water law" settings (if correct) probably won't make much difference because you would expect your heat pump to be running at close to its maximum output temperature. It's in spring and autumn when getting those settings right can save you money.

Getting out of the ground is the hard bit. It might be worth getting somebody in with a total station to see where you've set everything out, esp the levels.

Ah the dreaded comprise… if it’s easy and cheap I would relay them - that’s one of the privileges of a self build. Then make a mental note, particularly for later decisions that are hard to change after the fact, to ‘consider 19 times and build once’. There will be some things during the build that will be hard and expensive to change after the fact. Brace yourself that you will just have to live with those decisions. Alan

That'd be almost impossible to get a secure bond to. I think you're overthinking this. If you go over the wall with the low expanding adhesive foam wherever you see any dodgy bits at the same time you matrix-up the back of the insulation you're certainly not going to get a howling gale going on behind the sheets. Convection is stymied by continuous horizontal lines of adhesive. The airtightness of just about any type of foam would prevent mass airflow. But maybe someone else here has experience of using FM330 to bond rigid PIR?

Have you looked here: https://www.bracketfinder.co.uk/tv-wall-bracket-info/tv-size/tv/40/filters=_cat_273__10__53

By pressing the factory reset button.

As a retired builder who has fitted loads of skirting I agree, usually plasterers sweep up from the floor leaving thicker plaster at the floor level, it got to the stage where I told plasterers to make sure this did not happen and I finally found one that understood (and he became my go to bloke). I also don’t like proud plaster around door frames, makes fitting the architrave difficult. (Rant over)

Been using it for years, well actually use the main site where the proper data is. So to save myself time, and as I am not your secretary, if you search on here you will see a fair few charts I have done that analyses the data. This is why I know what I am talking about, I have been doing this kind of research for nearly two decades. Now if you want to learn about what you are doing, listen to this weeks Monkey Cage. No need for me to say more.

No I just pointed out that it is more obvious now than it would have been in the past. Sorry sometimes I am not very good with words.

Petrol powered pump and suitable hoses on standby as ultimate backup?

On bats, I was getting quoted quite high numbers by ecology companies including observations during variuos months of the year etc. I rang the council on the off-chance and spoke to the ecology team, they offered a site visit for a nominal fee (about £50), and the chap poked around in the loft and said that there was evidence of bats but it was very old and nothing recent, so he issued a report giving us the all clear. PHEW!